


Waiting for the End

by aguantare



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, secondary character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aguantare/pseuds/aguantare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The government turns on some of its citizens. Seventy years shouldn’t be enough time to forget where this road leads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on August 30th on LJ.
> 
> Disclaimer: don't know them, don't own them, don't sue me
> 
> Sidestories [#1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/580329) and [#2](http://archiveofourown.org/works/581456)

**Present Day**

It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon. Louis and Harry are home. Manchester United are playing Newcastle on Sky One, and Louis is yelling at the TV about a penalty when Zayn hears the thud of a door being slammed open, followed by a loud voice, demanding to know where someone is.

It takes him a terrifying second to realize that they’re talking about him.

He can’t hear who replies, if it’s Harry or Louis, but he recognizes the sharp crack of skin on skin, and he flinches like it’s him who’s been hit.

“You know what the penalty is for harboring a raghead?” the loud voice demands.

“Fuck off!” Louis. Another noise, still skin on skin, but duller. Knuckles instead of an open hand. Zayn slumps down on his bed, thinks about putting his hands over his ears, but decides that’s not fair to Louis and Harry. They’re bearing this for him.

“Fuck you,” Louis says again, “Shoot me, see if I give a fuck, it won’t change the fact that he’s not here.” Zayn feels a painful stab of pride and gratitude at Louis’ complete lack of fear and unwillingness to be bullied, even, presumably, with a gun to his head.

There’s a short pause. Then heavy footsteps, another slamming of a door, and Zayn lets out a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding.

He doesn’t see Harry or Louis until a day later, and when he does, he kind of feels like crying at the hand-shaped bruise on Harry’s cheek and Louis’ swollen, badly split upper lip.

“Shut up,” Harry says when he sees the look on Zayn’s face, “We’d do it again in a minute, so stop looking at us like that.”


	2. Chapter 2

**One Year Ago**

Zayn wakes up late on a rare day off to his phone buzzing angrily on his nightstand and a loud banging on the front door of his flat.

“What the fuck,” he growls, swiping for his phone and hitting the off button before shoving back the covers and stumbling out into the living room. The banging on his door isn’t abating, and he undoes the locks and yanks it open, hoping to god it’s not a fan who’s somehow gotten past security downstairs because right now he doesn’t honestly know if he has it in him to be nice.

It’s not a fan. It’s Liam, and he sags a little when he sees Zayn, frowns at him with an expression that Zayn recognizes as a combination of worry, anger, and relief.

“What?” he asks, still kind of irritated at being so rudely awakened. Liam huffs out a breath, pulls out his phone and flicks through a couple screens before handing it over. Zayn takes it, looks at the article that he’s pulled up.

 _Twenty Five Dead in Tube Bombings_ , the headline blares, _Hundreds Missing_. It takes Zayn a few moments to wake up enough to comprehend what he’s reading. When he looks back up, Liam is still frowning at him, but it’s mostly relief now.

“I was sleeping,” Zayn tries to explain, a little stupidly, he thinks as soon as he says it.

“Yeah, well, we thought you were dead,” Liam says, pushing past him and into his flat, “Text your mom.” Zayn scrubs a hand over his face, shuts the door and goes back to his bedroom to retrieve his phone. Sure enough there are four texts from his mom, asking him with increasing concern where he is and to please call back. There are also twelve other texts from the boys. The last one from Louis, a “ _pick up ur fucking phone u fucking wanker_ ” is just so Louis that he can’t help smiling a little at it as he types out a quick apology.

 _U better be_ , Louis texts back almost immediately.

It takes a couple hours, but the boys all end up over at Zayn’s apartment. The tube is shut down and traffic is snarled all over the city. Niall is the last one to arrive and he joins them in front of the TV. They watch with a mixture of sadness and disbelief as the magnitude of the attacks starts to sink in—the numbers of dead and missing, the destruction of four major transit hubs, the disruption of the arteries and lifelines of London.

The next day, Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for the attacks.

**Nine Months Ago**

Bradford always feels relatively quiet and calm compared to the hustle and bustle of London. Zayn likes it, likes being able to walk down familiar streets and feel at home. He gets recognized, but people tend to be more respectful, give him his space because they realize he’s not on the job here, he’s just a hometown lad back for a visit.

Safaa’s not expecting him to be here this weekend, so when she walks out the double doors of her school and sees him waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, she breaks into a grin and comes running down the stairs so fast that Zayn’s kind of worried she might fall.

“Hi!” she exclaims, wrapping around him. Zayn smiles, drapes his arm over her shoulders and asks how her day was as he starts them on a very leisurely walk towards the house. Of all of his sisters, Safaa is the most spontaneous. She chatters away about something that happened right at the end of the day, then turns around and talks about the first thing that happened that morning. Zayn used to find it almost irritating, the way she would sometimes start talking in the middle of her thoughts. Now he just finds it endearing.

He’s not really paying attention to the sparse traffic on the street next to them. He hears a car slowing next to them, but he doesn’t really think much of it.

And then. And then.

“Hey!” Zayn looks up, sees a scowling face framed by the car window, “You Pakis ought to go back to where you came from.”

Zayn shifts Safaa gently but firmly over to his other side, so he’s between her and the car.

“Ignore it,” he tells her, starting them walking again, this time with a little more pace. The car moves with them. Zayn starts to feel afraid, wonders if he should tell Safaa to run.

“Hey, raghead!” He doesn’t look over this time, but he doesn’t have to. He hears the telltale hacking noise, and a second later, there’s a warm slimy splatter sliding down his cheek.

-

A couple weeks later they go to Spain for a long weekend to do some shooting for a new music video. They all get way too much sun and way too little sleep, and Zayn is barely awake when they touch down back in London. He’s sort of half-leaning on Niall as they make their way toward Customs, and it’s only when he feels someone gently but firmly grip his upper arm that he forces himself into full alertness.

“Sir, could you come with us please?” It’s a Customs official, and she’s polite enough, but her words aren’t so much a question as a command. Zayn’s never been one to use his newfound status to try and get out of anything, so he just nods and tells Niall he’ll catch up in a second.

They keep him for over half an hour, going through his luggage piece by piece, asking him repeatedly about what he was doing in Spain, who he was with, where he had gone. He gets exasperated when they ask him for the third time if he went anywhere besides Spain.

“Where else would I go?” he asks. One of the officials looks him over.

“Well you’re certainly not from around here,” he says, just this side of a sneer.

When he finally catches up to the boys in the luggage claim, they ask him what took so long. He shrugs one shoulder, tries to look sheepish instead of shaken.

“I guess I looked suspicious,” he replies. He says it like a joke, and they take it as such.

**Six Months Ago**

“… _another attack eerily reminiscent of the tube attacks not six months ago, where the target was also England’s transportation infrastructure_ …”

“… _London Heathrow the target this time, with forty five confirmed dead, including nineteen British citizens, and another twenty still missing_ …”

“… _saying the bombs were filled with nails and ball bearings, in order to increase their effectiveness, a technique commonly used by Al-Qaeda_ …”

“… _investigators say the attackers were British citizens themselves, three of them Pakistani and the other reportedly from Saudi Arabia_ …”

“… _Parliament already discussing a number of measures in response, including immigration restrictions and mandatory registration_ …”

Someone taps Zayn’s shoulder, pulls him out of his sort of dazed focus on surfing through the news channels on the TV in the break room at the studio. He cranes his neck a little to look up, and Liam is standing there.

“Crazy, huh?” he asks, tilting his head toward the TV.

“Yeah,” Zayn replies. Liam watches the screen for a moment. It’s BBC One and they’re talking about how the suspected bombers were upstanding citizens, never aroused even a hint of suspicion among their acquaintances or neighbors.

“If they were terrorists,” one shell-shocked neighbor is saying, “Who couldn’t be one?”

“Come on,” Liam says eventually, “Let’s get back to work, yeah?”

Zayn agrees, but for the rest of the day, there’s like this itch at the back of his mind, a niggling hangnail of unease that just won’t let go.

-

A few days later, he and Louis go outside during their break to sign some autographs and take some pictures. One of the fans, a girl, maybe 12 or so, gets Louis to sign her poster, and then turns to Zayn, who smiles, reaches obligingly for the pen.

Her mother yanks her back sharply, fixes Zayn with a hard look.

“Get away from him,” the mother hisses. A couple feet away, Louis freezes midway through signing another autograph, looks up. The girl looks confused.

“He’s a _Muslim_ ,” the mother adds, spitting the word like an epithet, and Zayn flinches like he’s been slapped. The girl and her mother melt back into the crowd, and Zayn signs a few more autographs, almost on autopilot, and then Louis touches his elbow, a silent signal.

“Alright?” Louis asks, as soon as they’re back in the relative safety of the studio.

“Sure,” Zayn replies.

“Zayn.” Louis stops him, looks at him with uncharacteristic seriousness. “You know you don’t have to put up with that. Is this. Does this happen a lot?”

“No.” Louis looks skeptical. “Really, Lou.” It’s not exactly the truth, but Zayn doesn’t see any point in telling Louis about the few other instances now.

Louis sets his hands on his hips, looks at him for a long moment. He’s upset, in a way that Zayn has rarely, if ever seen before, and it kind of heartens him.

“It’s alright, Lou,” he says, “Best policy is just to ignore people like that. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

Louis doesn’t look particularly convinced.

Zayn isn’t really sure he’s convinced himself, either.

**Four Months Ago**

The envelope in itself doesn’t look all that ominous, just a white packet addressed to him by his full name, from the Home Office. When he opens it up, though, a slim, light blue plastic card slides out, along with a note on Home Office letterhead.

_Dear Mr. Malik,_

_Please find enclosed your Official Identity Card. You are required to carry this card with you at all times. Failure to meet this requirement may result in fines and/or legal action by the Home Office. Please contact the Home Office with any questions or concerns._

Zayn picks the card up off the counter, turns it over. It has his picture on the front, along with his birth date, address and other personal information.

And in the upper right hand corner, just above his picture, is an annotation in bright red capital letters:

**MUSLIM**

-

Niall, Harry and he go out for lunch during one of their recording sessions. Their plan is just to go to the little café around the corner, but Harry is really pining for McDonald’s, so they bypass the café and start for the McDonald’s a few blocks further away.

Halfway there, they pass a pair of policemen, and Zayn can feel their eyes following the three of them. He resists the urge to look back over his shoulder. Just as they reach the corner of the main road, someone calls to them to stop. They do, and the police approach them.

“ID cards, please,” the taller one says. They all hand over their IDs, and Zayn wonders if maybe they think the three of them are playing hooky from school. Then they hand back Harry and Niall’s cards, but keep his in hand.

“Where’re you boys headed?” the shorter one asks. He’s still eyeing Zayn’s card.

“Lunch,” Harry supplies.

“Where at?”

“McDonald’s, down at the corner.”

“You boys have jobs?” the taller one asks. He’s looking at Zayn.

“We’re in a band,” Niall replies. The shorter officer looks up then, squints a little.

“Weren’t you on X-Factor?” he says. He relaxes a little, having recognized them now, and he hands Zayn’s card back. The taller one, though, doesn’t share in the smiles and handshakes.

“So you’re Muslim?” he asks, still looking at Zayn.

“Yeah,” Zayn replies, not really caring that it comes out a little insolent. He’s not ashamed of who he is. The officer narrows his eyes a little.

“Might want to be careful where you walk from now on,” he says. Harry and Niall look at him, then at Zayn.

“Come on,” Niall says after a second, his expression suddenly icy, “Let’s go.”

Neither he nor Harry say anything about it then or in the days that follow. But Zayn notices how, any time he wants to go out for lunch, at least one of the boys always tags along. He would find it stifling, except.

Except.

They get stopped again. And then again. And then yet again. Always around the same block. They always ask for their ID cards, always hold on to his longest. Always look at him with narrowed eyes.

He wonders, more than once, what might have happened if they caught him alone.

**Three Months Ago**

Doniya calls him while they’re at the studio. He doesn’t pick up, because she knows he’ll call her back at their break. But she calls again. And a third time. And then a fourth. All in rapid succession. Zayn excuses himself, goes out into the hall and calls her back.

She picks up on the second ring. She’s crying. Zayn’s heart drops all the way to his feet.

“They took Dad,” she says, between shuddering breaths, “The police, they just came and took him away. They took him away.”

“What? _What?_ Why?” Zayn doesn’t even know how to process what she’s saying, what she’s telling him.

“They just said he’s a person of interest,” she replies. Zayn squeezes his eyes shut. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. He doesn’t know how many times he repeats that to himself before he becomes aware of Doniya saying his name.

“Sorry,” he manages. He feels wetness on his cheeks, wipes at it with the back of his hand.

“Zayn,” she says again, and her voice is still shaky but she sounds more authoritative now, “They. It’s not just Dad. They came and arrested other people too.”

She’s trying to tell him something. Zayn doesn’t get it.

“What are you saying?” he asks.

“Muslims, Zayn,” she clarifies, and she sounds like she’s fighting tears again, “All the men from the Muslim families in our neighborhood. All the ones over 18. Jamila’s dad, Nadia’s dad and her brother, Rahim and Ali and Tariq...”

Zayn feels his hands start to shake. He squeezes his eyes shut again, like maybe he can wake up from this nightmare if he just fucking tries hard enough.

“Zayn, I want you to move in with one of the boys,” she says, “Just. Just for awhile. So if. If they come for you, someone will know.”

Zayn doesn’t even know what to say to that. This can’t be happening.

“Okay,” he chokes out, finally, after what feels like a never-ending silence, “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

Doniya tells him she loves him before they end the call. He can’t remember the last time she did that.

**Two Months Ago**

Meetings with top-level management aren’t unheard of, but they aren’t exactly common either. Zayn walks into the Syco offices with Niall—he’s been sleeping on Niall’s couch for the past few weeks, and he’s kind of dazed, from the displacement, from everything that’s happened. His dad is still missing and the police won’t tell his mom anything. His sisters go to school still, when they can, but Doniya, who he talks to every day now, tells him that people follow them down the streets, call them names, spit on them. Often, they turn back.

Parliament is talking about a so-called “relocation plan” for Muslims, and there’s some outcry from the public because seventy years shouldn’t be enough time to forget where this road leads.

But there’s also a lot of support.

They walk into Simon’s office, and it’s just Simon and Sonny, which is a little weird, but Zayn doesn’t really think much about it. He wonders if they’ve called him in to drop him, or them. With the way things are going, he imagines their PR department is working overtime. He’s a brown-skinned Arab stain on their image, maybe even a danger to them, by association. He wouldn’t be surprised if they want to get rid of him.

“Zayn.” Simon addresses him directly once they’re all seated, and Zayn tries to steel himself. “The boys came to me last week, to talk to me about you.” Zayn feels a stab of betrayal, but tries to quell it. He understands, he does. It’s safer, to separate themselves.

“I didn’t know about the situation with your father,” Simon says, “I’m sorry.” Zayn shakes his head a little, not wanting to be rude, but really just wanting to get this over with.

Liam is sitting next to him. He reaches over, touches Zayn’s wrist. Zayn wonders if it’s meant to be an apology.

“We’ve bought a flat for you,” Simon is saying, and Zayn blinks.

“Wait, what?” he interrupts. Simon gives him a small smile.

“We’re having it remodeled,” he says, “It should be done in a week. It’ll be two flats in one, only the second flat will be off the grid, hidden from view. Harry and Louis will move in as soon as it’s done. If and when it becomes necessary, you’ll move in to the second flat.”

Zayn tries to say “Oh” but nothing really comes out. He’s kind of shocked. And overwhelmed.

“We’re also working on a similar flat in Bradford,” Sonny continues, “For your family. We’d like to think that you’ll never have to use either one, but given the circumstances…we thought it better to be safe than sorry.”

“Uhm.” Zayn looks down at his lap. His eyes feel hot and prickly and he really just wants to cry right now because he doesn’t know what he did to deserve people like this in his life. Liam touches his wrist again and Zayn just looks at him because what does he say, what can he possibly say. He always thinks of the boys as family, as brothers, but it’s just. Too much. To try and fathom what they’re doing for him. What they’re willing to do for him.

“Thank you,” he says, mostly into his hand, because he’s got it over his face to try and get control of himself. He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until someone grabs his wrist with a little more force, pulls him up and into a hug. Zayn recognizes the tinge of cologne in the shirt against his face.

“Niall,” he says, and he can’t really say anything else.

“You know all that one for all and all for one bullshit we trot out in interviews,” Niall says in his ear, “It’s not bullshit. We really do mean it.”

“Yeah,” Zayn mumbles, for lack of anything better to say.

Exactly eight days later, he goes back to his flat to check his mailbox, and there’s a letter waiting from the Home Office. It has “Important” stamped across the front. He takes it back to Niall’s to open it. He knows he doesn’t imagine the looks he gets from people on the tube.

Niall takes one look at his face when he walks in the door, the envelope in his hand, and shakes his head.

“I’ll call management and then I’ll call Lou and Harry,” he says, digging his phone out of his pocket.

Two days after that, he moves into the tiny apartment built into the crawlspace above and behind the living room of Louis’ and Harry’s new flat.


	3. Chapter 3

**Present Day**

Liam brings over Chinese food on a Friday night after they finish a long day at the studio.

“Some fans were asking about you today,” Harry says as they crowd into Zayn’s flat and start passing the food cartons around. Liam makes sure the wooden panel that separates the flat from the living room is firmly in place. From the outside, it looks identical to the other panels that line the stairs going up to the second floor of the main flat, and even a fairly close inspection of it doesn’t reveal that it’s anything other than decoration.

Zayn opens the single window and lights up a cigarette. Even though the window only looks out onto the roofs of other buildings, he rarely indulges like this anymore. He worries about the smoke, the ashes, the smell, and he worries about sending the boys to the store too often to get him another pack.

“What’d you tell them?” he asks, savoring the way his whole body seems to relax with the initial rush of nicotine.

“Told ‘em we don’t know, but that we miss you,” Niall responds, handing Zayn a carton of rice.

“It’s what management told us to say,” Liam says, “Makes it sound like you got out, got away.”

“They leak little bits of stuff to the tabloids too,” Louis adds, poking Harry with a chopstick until Harry swats at him. Zayn smiles a little at the familiarity, the ease of their interaction. It’s nice to be reminded that some things are still the same.

“Like what?” Zayn asks around a mouthful of rice.

“Just like…hints about where you are,” Harry explains, “They’ll make little references to like, California, or New York. Just in passing, but they know State Security will jump on anything they think is a valid lead.”

Liam holds out a piece of chicken in front of Zayn with his chopsticks, and Zayn just opens his mouth. Liam snorts and deliberately hits him in the nose with the chicken before depositing it in his mouth. Zayn pushes his shoulder in retaliation.

“Is State Security giving them any trouble about it?” he asks after he swallows. He’s thinking about the visit that Harry and Louis got not so long ago.

“A little,” Louis admits, “Simon and Sonny aren’t exactly pushovers, though.”

Zayn nods in agreement, and he’s grateful to them, to management for what they’ve done and are doing for him, but he can’t help thinking that at least Simon and Sonny are prominent, established celebrities with money and resources and teams of lawyers to back them up, while the boys are just that—boys.

-

He and Doniya text, every day. They use pre-paid cell phones now, switching numbers frequently to lessen the chances of their accounts being picked up on by State Security and whatever other resources the government is using.

Doniya’s the one who tells him what everyone suspected, that the relocation camps aren’t just internment camps. Tariq, a guy he went to school with, turns up on a neighbor’s doorstep one night, and luckily it’s a sympathetic neighbor, who takes him in and gets him to their hiding place under cover of darkness. They don’t know how he got there, and he won’t give them any details. But he tells them things are bad. Doniya takes pictures of the bruises on his face, the burns and lash marks on his chest and back and sends them to Zayn, and Zayn feels sick when he sees them.

_theyre torturing people_ , Doniya texts, _they think they have information about alqaeda and terrorist plots. its crazy._

One day, she sends another picture. It’s all three of his sisters and his mom, faces squished together to fit into the frame of the phone’s camera. They look tired, and thinner than he remembers, but they’re smiling, and it makes him smile. He takes a picture of himself, sends it back, tells them he loves them.

-

Liam brings over a bag of apples one evening. It’s not really apple season, so the apples aren’t the best, but to Zayn, nothing ever tasted better.

“Good?” Liam asks, smiling a little at Zayn’s blissful sigh around the first bite.

“Like you need to ask,” Zayn replies.

Fresh produce is rare nowadays for him. Harry and Louis do their best to grocery shop for three every week, without looking like they’re shopping for three, but they have to plan for weeks that they don’t, and that means buying a lot of stuff for Zayn that won’t spoil easily. Zayn likes a processed, packaged, overly salty dinner every once in awhile, but even a week of that stuff is just about enough for him. He can cook in the flat, if he really wants to, but he worries about someone smelling the oil or the spices or whatever else, and he also worries about sending Harry and Louis to buy yet more things.

He eats four apples, gets a little bit of a stomachache, and Liam laughs at him for it, tells him it’s his own fault. But he carefully leaves the rest of the apples on the counter, wrapped up in the bag, complete with a note about not letting them shrivel up and go bad.

Zayn saves the note, in a box with the few photos and knickknacks he brought with him from his flat.

-

Niall comes over to keep him company on an afternoon that they apparently have off. Zayn can barely remember what it’s like to want to have a day off in which to do nothing. There’s a chair in the corner, next to the mini-fridge, but Niall opts to sit on the bed next to Zayn, and Zayn appreciates it, wonders if the boys have figured out that physical closeness and contact makes him feel at least marginally less detached from the outside world.

They start looking up old YouTube videos of themselves, just for the hell of it. Niall pulls up the video of Zayn’s first audition at X-Factor and laughs at his hair, and Zayn elbows him in the ribs.

Niall flinches a little harder than he should. Zayn pulls back, eyes him sharply.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, almost harshly. Niall shrugs.

“Nothing,” he replies, and he sounds so casual, but Zayn reaches out to poke at his ribs again, and Niall eases away.

“Niall.”

Niall sighs a little, pauses the video on the computer screen.

“State Security came by yesterday,” he says, conversationally, like it’s no big deal. Zayn bites hard at the inside of his cheek to manage the rush of guilt he feels well up inside him.

“How bad?” he asks.

“I’m fine.”

“Niall.”

Niall looks at him, and there’s a dullness at the edge of his eyes that tells Zayn everything he needs to know. Niall was never very good at hiding it when he was hurting, even if it was just a minor headache.

“Fuck,” he says helplessly, “Fuck. Niall.”

“I’m fine,” Niall repeats, though not quite with the same conviction as before, “They’re scary bastards but I figure… if they knew where you were, there’d be no reason for them to visit me. And if they actually wanted to kill me, they would have done it already.”

It’s kind of horrific, Zayn thinks, that they say these kinds of things to one another now, without a second thought.

“Besides,” Niall adds after a second, “You’re worth it.”

Zayn bites down hard on his lower lip, looks down at his hands.

“Four lives for one?” he asks, barely above a whisper.

“Shut up,” Niall reponds, his voice hardening a little, “We know what we’re doing, Zayn. We love you, yeah? We’d take a bullet for you. Without even thinking twice about it.”

Zayn wonders what he ever did to deserve friends like this.


	4. Chapter 4

The first time Louis climbs up into the flat after Zayn goes to bed, he thinks it’s someone coming to take him away. His heart is going a million miles a minute and he’s kind of shaky when Louis slips into bed next to him, and Louis notices.

“Sorry,” he says, sounding genuinely apologetic.

“S’alright,” Zayn replies, setting his head back on his pillow and taking a deep breath, “What’s up?”

Louis settles in next to him, knees knocking against Zayn’s under the covers.

“Harry and I were worried you’re being deprived of our wonderful, vibrant personalities on a day to day basis,” he explains, “We figured that must be pretty terrible. So. Here I am.”

Zayn smiles a little, pokes Louis in the ribs, gets kicked in the ankle in return. Before he can retaliate, Louis throws an arm around him and snuggles in companionably close.

“We also miss you,” he adds, still smiling, but without the teasing edge now.

“You see me almost every day,” Zayn points out.

“’S’not the same,” Louis replies, “There’s five parts to our songs. Not four.”

Zayn does worry, sometimes, when his mind isn’t more preoccupied with whether he’s going to actually survive this whole mess, that they’re going to move on, leave him behind, become a group without him. He knows that it’s stupid to think like that, considering everything they’re doing for him, but it’s hard, the isolation, the loneliness, and he’s really kind of glad that Louis intuited that it might be bothering him more than he was letting on.

“I miss you too,” Zayn says, and he tries not to sound too wistful, “I miss singing. I miss all of it. Even the really shitty parts of it.” Louis smiles.

“Even me and Harry tossing you in the pool with all your clothes on that one time in Chicago?”

Zayn laughs.

“Surprisingly, even that,” he replies, “But only because I didn’t drown.”

“It was 4 feet of water,” Louis points out.

“You threw me in head first.”

“Don’t tell me you couldn’t figure out which way was _up_.”

Zayn pokes Louis in the ribs again, a little harder than before, and Louis tweaks his nose.

“Right, war it is then,” Zayn declares. Louis tries to scramble away from him but gets tangled in the covers and ends up tumbling both of them over the edge of the bed and onto the floor with a thump.

“Graceful,” Zayn comments, digging his fingers into Louis’ sides. Louis yelps, giggling almost uncontrollably and goes for Zayn’s armpits in retaliation.

When they finally call a truce, Zayn’s got a rug burn on his cheek and Louis’ hair is standing up at ridiculous angles and there’s no way either of them are getting to sleep any time soon.

But Zayn feels better than he has in weeks.

-

Harry and Niall come up a week or so later, and Niall has his guitar with him. He strums out a few chords of "One Thing" and the melody comes back to Zayn in an instant, achingly familiar and laden with memories. His voice is rusty from not having sung in so long—he doesn’t even know when the last time was that he actually sang something of substance—but he keeps in pretty good tune even so.

Harry watches him while he sings, his expression unreadable. Zayn raises an eyebrow at him, and he just shrugs, gives him a sheepish half-smile. When Niall lets the last chord trickle off the strings, Harry shifts, pulling a knee up to his chest where he’s sitting with his back against the bed.

“Guess I didn’t realize how spoiled we were, getting to hear you in the studio every day,” he says, quietly.

Zayn smiles a little, squeezes Harry’s ankle in acknowledgment of the compliment. It’s interesting, he thinks, how he and Harry took a little bit longer to warm up to each other in the beginning than the others, but nowadays, Harry’s the one who seems to be taking everything the hardest. Louis told him, not too long ago, that Harry sometimes balks at taking on Zayn’s solos on promos, and that when he does take on his solos, he’s always quiet for the rest of the day afterward.

“You boys working on anything new?” he asks, leaving his hand on Harry’s ankle.

“Sort of. Not really,” Niall admits, thumbing a few random chords.

“Why not?”

Niall shrugs.

“Doesn’t seem right, does it?” he asks, somewhat rhetorically, “You being in hiding and the way they’re treating people in the camps. Would be pretty terrible of us to just keep on like it was all okay.”

“Your whole career is kind of built on staying new and current though,” Zayn points out.

“Our career is also built on having a fifth voice,” Niall replies, with a definite note of finality. He raises his eyebrows at Zayn, like he’s daring him to argue back, and Zayn isn’t going to. It’s just that it’s kind of hard to wrap his head around how much they’re all sacrificing for him, and sometimes he wants to tell them that they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t have to, because he’s just one person and he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to forgive himself for the stuff they’ve already put up with because of him.

He almost wants to say thank you then, but he stops himself short on that, too. Thank you is for birthday gifts and Christmas presents and social niceties. Thank you would cheapen everything they’re doing for him.

So instead he just pokes Niall in the knee, asks if he remembers the chords for Gotta Be You. Niall looks mildly offended that he even has to ask, and Zayn sits back and lets the familiar tune wash over him, coaxing the lyrics out from corners of his mind that had temporarily been shut down in favor of more immediate concerns.

-

The boys bring him dinner on Eid. He doesn’t even remember that it’s Eid, but apparently they do, and they bring him dates and everything, and he has to swallow a lump in his throat before he can thank them. They stay with him most of the night, just chatting and trading stupid stories and tossing around silly throwaway song lyrics. Louis steals his phone and he and Harry and Niall start taking silly pictures and texting them to his sisters. Zayn rolls his eyes at them, tells them to cut it out, but when he calls Doniya later, she tells him that Waliyha and Safaa are the happiest she’s seen them in a long time.

-

Beyond holidays and special occasions, Liam tries to bring some meals over every week, and he makes a concerted effort to keep it interesting, to not repeat the same old stuff week in and week out. Usually some or all of the other boys join them, but tonight it’s just them, and Zayn is kind of glad. Liam’s energy is different than Harry and Louis and Niall’s. He’s calmer, more collected, and it’s always been like that, but Zayn feels like he needs that even more now, when he doesn’t have much else to hold on to that’s constant.

Today is one of those days where he just itched all day to get up, get out, do something. The air felt stale, even when he opened the window, and his legs started to ache when he sat still for too long. He stubbed his toe on the leg of his bed, hit his elbow on the dresser, and he almost told Liam to leave when he arrived, because he felt like he just needed space.

But Liam, just by his very presence, makes him feel less anxious, less fidgety. He sits at the foot of the bed, sets his laptop on his crossed legs and puts on their album on low volume. He lets Zayn stew in silence over the last of the chicken curry, and it’s only halfway through More Than This when Zayn slides onto the bed next to Liam, presses their shoulders together.

“One of those days?” Liam asks, looking over. Zayn sees, with a sharp stab of guilt, the dark bruise on his left cheek.

“Not as bad as yours, it looks like,” he says. Liam shrugs, rubs absently at the bruise.

“No big deal,” he responds.

“’No big deal,’” Zayn echoes faintly. Liam rolls his eyes, like Zayn is worrying over absolutely nothing.

“Hardly the first time I’ve gotten knocked around by someone bigger and scarier than me,” he clarifies, and Zayn supposes he’s trying to make it better, but it just makes it worse because it’s him, he’s the reason this is happening to Liam all over again, and this time it’s not just school yard bullies, it’s bullies with guns and power and a whole lot of hatred.

Liam preempts him before he can say anything more though.

“I think I’d go stir crazy if I were you,” he says, “Being locked up here all the time.”

Zayn looks at him for a moment longer.

“Yeah,” he says eventually, going along with the subject change because this guilt could consume him if he lets it, “Could really do with a run around the block or something.”

“I bet.”

They end up sitting there for almost two hours, listening to music, occasionally humming along or trying out harmonies under their breath. Zayn doesn’t even realize he’s fallen asleep until he wakes up with his cheek pressed into Liam’s shoulder.


	5. Chapter 5

Christmas and Louis’ birthday and then New Years pass in a muted flurry of lights and music and a dusting of snow. Zayn can’t really get the boys anything in the way of gifts because he can’t go out and he’s wary of using any of his credit cards to buy anything online; he doesn’t know what State Security might be able to see, how they might be able to trace him.

When he tries to apologize though, on Christmas Eve, the boys all pile onto the bed and on top of him, close and comforting in a way that Zayn needs.

“We have you here,” Liam says, matter of factly, poking him lightly in the cheek, “What makes you think we would want anything else?”

-

The day the text messages stop coming from Doniya, that’s the first time he cries since he went into hiding. He knows, without anyone telling him, that they’ve been found, that they’re being sent to a camp, that they’re going to be made to endure things they should never have to, and there’s not a goddamn thing he can do about it.

He holds it together until the clock hits 9 PM and it’s been a full twenty four hours since the last message. Then it’s like it all comes roiling up inside of him, and he stumbles to the bathroom, throws up until there’s nothing left to throw up and his face is soaked with tears and he just wants to curl up and sleep and never wake up because this can’t be happening.

Louis finds him like that, a complete mess, and Zayn has the wherewithal to feel at least vaguely embarrassed, but Louis doesn’t recoil, doesn’t even act surprised. He hauls him up off the floor, gets him a glass of water and a cold cloth for his face, pushes him gently but firmly out of the bathroom and toward the bed.

“Lou,” Zayn says as he slumps down on the covers. His voice is phlegmy and hoarse, his throat raw. “Lou, they’re gone. My mom. My sisters.”

Louis looks at him with pained eyes, his lips pulled into a tight line. He presses his hand against Zayn’s shoulder, squeezes almost hard enough to hurt.

“They’ll be okay,” he says.

“No,” Zayn gasps out, jamming the heels of his palms against his eyes, “They _won’t_.”

Louis crouches down in front of him, presses his other hand to the side of Zayn’s neck, thumb on his jaw so Zayn doesn’t really have any other choice but to look at him.

“They’re strong,” Louis says, like it’s the truest thing he’s ever said, “I know, okay? It runs in the family.”

Louis stays with him, all night. Neither of them sleep, but every time Zayn shifts, restless, agitated, grief-stricken, he feels Louis’ hand on his arm, shoulder, back, and it anchors him, keeps him from breaking into a million pieces. Reminds him that he’s not alone.

-

Zayn doesn’t talk for almost two weeks, and when he finally does, the first thing out of his mouth is a waspy, stinging barb at Niall. They’re talking about something music related, he doesn’t even remember what, and Niall says something kind of jokingly, a little childish maybe, but mostly just meant to cheer him up.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Zayn snaps, “Don’t be fucking stupid.”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, he regrets them, and he looks up fast enough to catch the flash of hurt on Niall’s face before it shifts into something more like sympathy.

“Shit,” he mumbles, cheeks flushing, “Sorry, Niall. I’m not. I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s alright,” Niall says, and the worst part is that he actually sounds like he means it.

“No, it’s not.” Zayn shakes his head, scrubs a hand over his face, looks up at the ceiling. “Fuck.”

Niall pads across the room to where Zayn is sitting with his back against the bed, sits down next to him.

“It’s alright,” he repeats, just as genuine as the first time, and Zayn doesn’t know what to do with that except hang his head and kind of hate himself.

“Hey.” Niall slings an arm around his shoulders, rests his head briefly against Zayn’s. “If I were you, if I had just lost contact with my family and couldn’t even go and try and find them, I think I’d be pretty overwhelmed too.”

Zayn’s chest tightens painfully, but he’s grateful, somehow, that Niall doesn’t try to sugarcoat what’s happened, doesn’t hesitate in putting it into words.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, just because he feels like he has to.

Niall sighs a little.

“None of this is your fault,” he says quietly.

-

He doesn’t know if Niall says anything about it to the others, but he notices that their visits are more individual over the next couple weeks, and more subdued. They don’t treat him like he’s made of glass, and he appreciates that, but they don’t make him talk either, if he doesn’t want to.

It’s Liam who’s hanging out with him when they both hear the knock at the front door downstairs. Liam looks instinctively at the panel. It’s fully closed. Someone opens the door. Heavy footsteps make the floorboards creak. Jesus, Zayn thinks to himself, how many of them are there?

“Where is he?” someone asks.

“Who?” Niall. Icy calm. Zayn doesn’t know how he manages it.

There’s a crack of skin on skin, then a thud. Liam flinches, and Zayn stares daggers at the closed panel.

“Where is he?” another voice, rougher, asks again.

“Don’t know. Fuck off.” Louis this time. Some scuffling, a dull thump, a curse.

“Last chance. Where is he?”

A short pause.

“Like he said. Fuck off.” Harry. His voice is shaking, but defiant.

A muffled pop, and then Harry’s making the most awful noise Zayn has ever heard, like the scream is being torn out of him, jagged and horrible, ripping him apart at the edges. Zayn grabs at Liam’s hand, digs his fingers in hard to try and keep some sort of control of himself, and Liam grabs back, rigid and tense next to him.

“We’ll find him sooner or later,” the rough voice threatens, “And when we do, this is going to look like a fucking birthday party compared to what we’ll do to him.”

Footsteps signal departure, and Harry’s crying fills their ears, deep, shuddering sobs, pain they can’t even begin to imagine.

Zayn buries his face in Liam’s shoulder, can’t tell if it’s him or Liam who’s shaking, or maybe both of them.

Thinks, _I’ve killed one of my best friends._


	6. Chapter 6

Zayn adds St. Mary’s Hospital to his list of people and institutions to thank, if he survives this whole thing. Niall tells him that the doctors didn’t ask any questions and didn’t hesitate in taking Harry, even though it was obvious who shot him.

They don’t know if Harry will ever walk again. His knee cap is shattered, blown apart by the bullet that State Security put through it. He’s already had one surgery and he’s scheduled for at least one more. He’s in a wheelchair for the moment, and when they do interviews, they put it down to a bad fall, a clumsy moment, but Zayn wonders how many people out there have their suspicions.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Zayn mutters when he sees Harry for the first time afterward, almost three weeks later. The guilt chokes him as he watches Harry awkwardly maneuvering himself through the panel frame with Louis’ help.

“Shut up,” Harry replies, wincing a little as his casted leg jars against the edge of the frame.

“Harry.”

“Shut _up_ , Zayn.” Harry gets himself through the frame and kicks lightly at the back of Zayn’s knees with his good leg. Zayn obliges, sits down on the floor next to him. Harry looks a little spacey, no doubt from the cocktail of painkillers swimming through his system, but his gaze on Zayn’s is steady.

“It was either me getting shot in the knee, or you getting tortured and maybe killed in one of those camps,” he says, “I don’t know about you, but I’d choose the first option any time.”

Zayn looks at him for a long moment, at the shadows under his eyes, the sweat on his forehead from hauling himself up here. He’s not young anymore. None of them are. Zayn wraps an arm around Harry’s neck, presses a kiss to his temple.

“Oi!” Louis exclaims, shoehorning himself up through the panel opening, “Hands off, Malik, he’s mine.”

“Sharing is caring,” Zayn retorts. Harry smirks, sticks out his tongue at Louis when he pretends to be offended. He spends the rest of the afternoon sort of curled up as best he can along Zayn’s side, and Louis continues to feign hurt feelings, but Zayn catches him looking at them more than once, his expression soft around the edges.

-

It ends almost as suddenly as it began. The details are sketchy at best, but Louis and Harry tell him that it sounds like NATO got involved, that the government balked at a confrontation, and within hours, the first of the camps was already being opened up.

Zayn doesn’t believe it at first, thinks maybe it’s just a ploy to entrap people like him who are still in hiding. He stays inside for two more days. Harry and Louis tell him that they still haven’t seen a single Arab-looking man out on the streets.

On the third day, someone knocks at the front door. Zayn hears one of the boys answer it. A few moments pass, quiet voices murmuring back and forth. Then the panel’s sliding back, and Louis is there, his expression unreadable.

“Come downstairs,” he says, and something in his voice makes Zayn obey without question. It’s the first time he’s been outside the tiny, hidden flat in over a year. He doesn’t know if it’s just his imagination, but the light feels brighter down here.

Liam and Niall are standing in the foyer. And standing next to them, holding Niall’s hand, is—

“Safaa.”

He falls on his knees, suddenly weak, and she runs to him, throws herself into his arms. She’s thin, far thinner than he remembers and her hair is ragged, her clothes frayed, but she’s warm and she’s alive. She spills hot tears into the crook of his neck, saying his name over and over, and Zayn holds her, just wanting to wrap her up and comfort her and take away everything that’s happened, that’s hurt her.

Over her shoulder, he catches Liam’s eyes, asks without asking. Liam presses his lips together, shakes his head, and Zayn feels his stomach hitch, the sharp contrast of happiness and grief, relief and guilt almost too much. He tries not think about the fact that maybe Safaa already knows that they’re the only ones left out of their family, tries not to think about the fact that maybe she saw it happen. Maybe they made her watch.

“Hey, Safaa.” Louis crouches down next to them. “What do you say to some tea, yeah?” Safaa’s never been shy around the boys, and Zayn is heartened to see that that hasn’t really changed. She reaches for Louis’ hand and walks with him towards the kitchen.

Zayn watches her go, feels like he might shatter into a million pieces all over again, but then Liam is there, offering a hand up and pulling him into a bear hug. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to, and Niall’s hand is on his back, and it’s an “It’s going to be okay” and “I’m sorry” and “You’re not alone” all at the same time.

“It’s really over, huh?” he says against Liam’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Liam sighs, “Yeah, it’s really over.”

-

It’s not. Not really. It’ll take weeks, months, years to come to terms with what’s happened. There are emergency elections, declarations to undo the laws that were passed, clashes between the remnants of State Security and the military. Curfews are instituted, then lifted. Missing person flyers and photos cover the walls of transit stations and bus stops. The new government sets up receiving stations at schools and stadiums for people who have no homes and kids whose parents are gone. Zayn watches the news one night and sees the wide, empty eyes of the orphaned kids waiting in line at one of the centers to be registered. He doesn’t know, exactly, how Safaa ended up on Liam’s doorstep in London, but he’s desperately, desperately glad that she did.

He moves back to his old flat, and holds out hope for the first few weeks that his parents and Doniya and Waliyha will show up on his doorstep, the way Safaa did. He never gets any official notice from the government, but after a month and a half, he knows. He starts the legal process to become Safaa’s legal guardian. The judges he has to deal with are sympathetic, kind even, and they streamline the process for him.

He loses himself, for awhile, in looking after Safaa. She has nightmares, so he spends a lot of nights sitting with her, stroking her hair until she falls asleep, and sometimes he can slip away after she does, but more often than not she wakes up again, terrified that she’s back in the camp or that he’s been taken away. He takes her to the park when the weather is nice, lets her pick out DVDs to watch when it’s not, and she’s not as spontaneous, not as bright and energetic as she used to be, but he sees little glimmers of her personality peeking through here and there, and he’s kind of selfishly glad that at least she still trusts him, if no one else. He goes to court, signs papers, goes to hearings, signs more papers. He leaves messages with schools, trying to find out if he can get Safaa in mid-year, or if she’ll have to start over next fall.

Then she starts taking food, hiding it in the room in Zayn’s flat that he’s turned into hers, at least for the moment, and that’s when Zayn kind of realizes that he’s really not dealing with this as well as he thinks he is. He gets angry at her, yells at her when she denies that she took anything, and her face crumbles and she flinches away from him, scared, and he instantly feels sick. He stumbles out of the room, calls Liam, asks him to come over. He thinks he sounds okay, thinks he keeps his voice level, but Liam shows up twenty minutes later with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and Louis in tow.

“I can’t,” Zayn says, doesn’t elaborate, but they don’t seem to need him to. Louis squeezes his shoulder as he moves past him, heads down the hall like he’s got a sixth sense for a child in distress, and Liam guides him to the living room, sits him down. Zayn watches him pull out a bottle of vodka and a couple of shot glasses, pour them both shots, and hand one over.

“You think I need to get drunk?” he asks flatly, taking the shot glass.

“I think you need to grieve,” Liam says bluntly. Zayn vaguely feels like protesting at the incongruity of taking shots while his sister is crying in the other room because of him, but Liam just looks at him, and Zayn knows he’s right.

It takes him four shots. His vision is blurring, and he’s not sure if it’s the alcohol or something else. His muscles relax, and it’s like something opens up inside him, a dam that he didn’t even know was there.

“I never told my parents I loved them,” he says eventually, without preamble, “They’re my parents, you know. They’re supposed to be invincible.”

Liam is quiet, his knee solid, unmoving against Zayn’s.

“Fuck,” he says after a moment, “What the fuck, Li. I’m talking about them like they’re still alive.”

“They’re your parents,” Liam replies, “I think that’s natural.”

Zayn swallows hard. His throat feels tight.

“I try not to think about it,” he says slowly, “How they. How they died. I hope it was quick, you know. Not. Not slow.” His breath hitches. The alcohol makes it harder not to think about it. Maybe that’s Liam’s plan, he realizes. He kind of wants to be angry at Liam for that, but he doesn’t have it in him right now.

He talks about his dad for awhile.

“He never tried to…pressure us. He wanted us to decide, for ourselves, what we believed.”

“I wish I could’ve told him how much I respected him for that.”

His mom.

“I got cross with her one time. When I was leaving, and she was so upset. I never really apologized for that.”

“My dad was the disciplinarian, but my mom…I was always more scared of disappointing her.”

His sisters.

“Doniya and Waliyha got up at like four AM one time, just so they could get this special pastry from some bakery in Leeds for Safaa’s birthday.”

“We always had this like…sibling alliance or something, like if I was arguing with our parents, they’d take my side, even if I was wrong.”

He’s starting to sober up now, but the words are still spilling out of him, all the memories he’s been driving himself crazy with, and it doesn’t feel good, exactly, but it feels better, somehow. Liam prompts him once or twice, when he trails off, but mostly he just talks and Liam just listens, and the silences in between are almost comfortable.

It’s nearly four in the morning when the fatigue hits him, suddenly, like a freight train. He blinks slowly at Liam, his eyelids heavy, and Liam just gives him a small, knowing upward quirk of the lips.

“Come on,” he says, patting Zayn’s knee and getting to his feet, “I think you need sleep now.”

“Too far,” Zayn grumbles, but allows Liam to drag him to his feet. They pass Safaa’s room on the way to his room, and both she and Louis are asleep, Safaa’s head on Louis’ shoulder, Louis’ arm curled protectively around her. After that, Zayn barely remembers walking down the hall and falling face first onto his bed, and he knows that Liam put a blanket over him only because he wakes up the next morning curled up in it.

He walks into the kitchen, still a little bleary, and Liam and Louis are there, cooking breakfast. Safaa is sitting at the table with a cup of tea in front of her, but she jumps to her feet and runs across the kitchen, wraps her arms around his waist.

“Louis says I have to be strong for you,” she says matter of factly, “Because you’re being strong for me.” Zayn glances over to where Louis is busy mixing up pancake batter.

“Yeah, love,” he replies over the lump in his throat, dropping a kiss on her forehead, “We’ll be strong for each other, alright?”

Later, before Louis and Liam leave, Louis hands him a piece of paper with links to some websites about children and trauma and food hoarding.

“Harry and Niall figured it out,” he explains, “Spent some time last night researching it. Texted me the links this morning.”

Zayn wonders if it’s physically possible to explode with gratitude. Or love. Or both.


	7. Chapter 7

Time slips by. A year passes before any of them even realize it. Zayn realizes, belatedly, that he’s been shielded from the worst effects of everything that’s happened, by virtue of his status and his connections with some of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry. He hasn’t lost his home, his business, his career. Management, he learns, was able to move most of his money into a savings account under its name, so he still has financial stability. It’s kind of fucked up, he thinks, to say that he “only” lost his family, but when he watches the news and sees stories about survivors who were university professors and high level researchers before, but now can’t even rent a flat, he understands that he could have lost so much more.

The community is fractured, too. He goes to the mosque a few times in the aftermath, looking for…something. He’s not sure what. He doesn’t really find it. Some people are embittered and angry, advocating closing ranks and retreating into their own neighborhoods, their own schools. Others are stoic and silent, just wanting to avoid talking about any of it. Zayn gets both sides, knows both the anger and the desire to avoid intimately, but he doesn’t feel at home with either idea.

And then he goes out, for groceries, to pick Safaa up from school, or just to be out, and some people, non-Muslims, look at him like he’s a ghost, or like he’s some rare specimen that none of them know what to make of. Others won’t look at him at all. There aren’t many Muslims around, not any more, and even though he and Safaa speak English and dress like everyone else, he feels naked, exposed every time they go out.

He tells himself it’ll get better, but he doesn’t know if that’s true.

-

He marks the one year anniversary of his being able to come out of hiding by getting four new tattoos.

“What do they say?” Louis asks, when Zayn shows them to him one afternoon. Louis has been quiet recently, quieter than usual, and Zayn isn’t sure if it’s just his imagination, but he thinks Louis has been particularly stoic around him.

“’Mother,’ ‘Father…’” Zayn replies, pointing to the first two inked Arabic words gracing his left side.

“’…Doniya, Waliyha’?” Louis finishes quietly, touching the words on his right side. Zayn nods, lets his shirt fall back down. Louis pulls his lower lip between his teeth, shoves his hands in his pockets.

“I’m sorry,” he says, so quietly that Zayn almost doesn’t hear him.

“Wh-jesus christ, Louis, for what?”

“We.” Louis frowns, looks down at his feet, then back up. “I wish we could have done more. To save them.”

Zayn doesn’t know whether to hit him or hug him. He settles for the latter, squeezes a hand at the back of Louis’ neck with maybe a little more force than he usually would, and Louis sort of relaxes against him.

“Don’t ever,” Zayn says fiercely, “Don’t you ever apologize to me, ever again.”

-

The next big milestone is that Zayn walks into the studio one day and Harry is standing there. Standing. No cast, no crutches, nothing. When he sees Zayn standing stock still in the doorway, he half-smiles, and walks-- _walks_ \--over, with just the barest hint of a limp.

“Hi,” he says.

“You’re…” Zayn doesn’t really know what to say, and he doesn’t know why this is rendering him speechless—he should be leaping for joy, thanking whatever powers that be that he’s seeing what he’s seeing.

“All better,” Harry says, holding out his arms, as if to invite examination. Zayn manages a smile then, looks him up and down, nods like he’s giving approval. Harry laughs out loud and sort of flings himself at Zayn, and Zayn catches him, but they end up in a heap on the floor as a result.

“Nice one,” Zayn grumbles, without malice. Harry hums, unconcerned, rests his chin on Zayn’s shoulder. Zayn reaches out and ruffles his hair.

“So the leg’s all better,” he says after a moment.

“Mm-hm.”

“How about this?” Zayn asks, quieter, tugging gently at Harry’s curls. Harry looks confused for a moment, then seems to understand.

“Getting better,” he says, “I’m seeing a counselor, she specializes in trauma and…assault, I guess is the word. She’s really good. Helped me a lot.”

Zayn nods, thinks about the therapist he found for Safaa and how Safaa has bounced back so much more quickly than he would have ever thought possible.

“She’s.” Harry pauses, finds Zayn’s gaze again before continuing. “She’s got space in her schedule, for another client. If. You know.”

Zayn shrugs a little, sitting up, and Harry shifts into a cross-legged position next to him.

“Louis is seeing a therapist over in West London,” Harry continues after a few moments, “Niall, too. At St. Mary’s. Liam hasn’t said anything, but he’s had a few weekly appointments that he’s gone off to recently.”

Zayn shrugs again, even though part of him already knows he’s going to ask Harry for the contact information. He’s not one of those overly stubborn types who thinks he can get through anything on his own if he just tries hard enough. He knows, rationally, that talking to a counselor or a therapist is probably one of the best things he could do for himself at this point.

It’s more just that he’s kind of terrified of having to bring up everything that happened, having to relive it over in aching, excruciating detail. He worries that, somehow, having to go back and recall everything with too much clarity will destroy the progress that he feels like he’s made already.

“Will you go with me?” he asks, eventually, “The first time, I mean.”

Harry leans against him, solid, comfortable warmth along his side.

“Of course.”

-

The guilt still catches him, sometimes, strains at the careful threads of healing he’s finally started to build up. He and Niall and Liam go out for lunch one day, a successful morning in the studio under their belts and lyrics and melodies and harmonies still fresh in their minds and on their lips. Niall is leaping onto light posts, swinging around them in dramatic fashion, and Liam is laughing, looking like he just might join in, when he freezes, the smile sliding off his face. It would be almost comical, except then Niall sees it too, and the way he goes rigid, his face closing off in a way Zayn has never, ever seen before, it’s like a knife in Zayn’s gut.

The pair of policemen approaching them look friendly enough, their stances open and non-threatening, but Zayn is on edge—hyper alert, hyper aware.

“’Morning, boys,” the shorter one greets them.

“’Morning,” Liam replies for all of them. His voice is thin, shallow, _afraid_ , and it kills Zayn. The officer is reaching into his pocket now, and Niall grabs Zayn’s arm, like he’s getting ready to yank him aside.

The officer pulls out his phone, offers an almost sheepish grin.

“My daughter will murder me if I don’t get a picture,” he says, “Would you mind?”

There’s an almost awkward pause, and then Liam says, “Yeah, sure, no, of course” and he sounds a little breathless and Zayn can see him visibly relaxing.

They take the picture and the officers move on, and Zayn feels Niall lean against him, muttering a curse under his breath. None of them really have an appetite after that, so they just go back to the studio, try and get through the rest of the day as best they can.

Zayn loses a lot of nights of sleep over that one.

-

Management makes sure to clear questions well before any interviews they do, but in retrospect, Zayn figures it was kind of inevitable that this would happen. Questions about him going into hiding, his family, the things that happened, are supposed to be off-limits, at least for the time being. They want to address them at some point, but only when they’re all ready.

The interviewer is American, blonde and attractive, and Harry and Louis are well into their flirt with her/flirt with each other routine when she blindsides them with the first question.

“So whose idea was it for Zayn to go into hiding from the government?”

There’s a second of sort of stunned silence, and then Louis is answering, his voice and his expression changing from open and happy to closed off and guarded as fast as Zayn has ever seen.

“It was all of ours,” he replies, “Us, and management.”

Paul is already moving behind the camera, obviously intending to shut the interview down, but Louis looks over the camera at him, gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Zayn looks sideways at him, outwardly calm, because he learned a long time ago how to mask his emotions when needed, but inwardly—not panicked, just a little thrown off. Louis looks over fractionally, shifts his leg a little so his knee touches Zayn’s, and it’s strange how that small of a gesture can calm him down, but it does.

“Why did you want him to go into hiding?”

“It was too dangerous for him to live out in the open,” Louis responds, “He would have been interned in one of the camps.”

Zayn thinks it’s kind of weird that she’s asking the questions like he’s not even there, like he can’t speak to the experience himself.

Then she asks the next, and what turns out to be the last question, with just the barest sneering curl of her upper lip.

“Why would you risk your lives for a Muslim?”

Louis stands up so fast he knocks his chair over, and Harry isn’t far behind. They both look so angry that for a split second Zayn thinks they might actually take a swing at the interviewer, even though she’s a woman.

It’s Louis who answers, his voice like ice.

“Because he’s a hundred times the person you’ll ever be.”

He jerks his head at Paul, and the interview ends, but before they leave, they make a joint decision not to rescind the interview.

“Let people see it,” Niall says, “It says more about it than we probably could have ever said in a planned interview.”

“Zayn?” Liam looks at him, and the others follow suit. Zayn doesn’t hesitate. PR probably isn’t going to particularly enjoy this one, and management might ultimately make them back down, but so what.

“Yeah,” he says, “Let them see it.”

-

PR, surprisingly, doesn’t give them a hard time about it. Neither does management. They make the tabloids for a few days, but the coverage is mostly, surprisingly, sympathetic. Zayn knows there’s been some stuff in the news recently about the main media outlets reshuffling their organizations in the aftermath of everything that’s happened. The media role in contributing to the fear and distrust that was used to justify the camps hasn’t been focused on—yet—but it’s pretty clear they know it’s only a matter of time.

They get some hate mail for it. Some. Not much. They also get a lot of letters expressing support. Some of them are from their fans, but some of them are from others. People who survived the camps. People who waited it out in hiding just like Zayn. People who watched it all from abroad.

Zayn takes to reading the letters and emails during their breaks. There are short ones—thank you notes, blessings written in both English and Arabic, and other languages he can’t read—and there are long ones—gut wrenching accounts of being tortured, of being forced to watch family and friends tortured, impassioned pleas not to let what’s happened be forgotten.

One or two of the boys usually join him. It’s a duty, an obligation that they undertake without complaint, and it’s also just a way to kind of share the emotional weight. Liam likes to read out bits and pieces of the letters he reads, phrases he finds particularly poignant or telling. Louis will just kind of hand over ones he thinks Zayn should read. Niall always takes his time picking out the ones he wants to read, handles them carefully, like treasured possessions. Harry reads the fewest of all of them, not because he doesn’t want to do it, but because he tries to take them all in, every word, every detail.

Liam’s with him today. He’s got an email in his hands, and he’s chewing voraciously on his lower lip, a sure sign that whatever he’s reading is bothering him. He glances up, sees Zayn looking at him expectantly, and huffs out a breath.

“’I just wanted you to know that I listened to your music the whole time I was in hiding,’” Liam reads out loud, “’It got me through the darkest times, when I didn’t think I was ever going to get out of there.’” He shakes his head, sets the paper down.

“I don’t…I can’t get my head around it,” he says.

“Around what?”

“We…we sing these songs about, you know…puppy love and romance and all that. How does someone who’s hiding out from being put in a camp where they’ll be tortured or killed take comfort in that? Our music…our music just seems…superficial, in comparison.”

It’s strange, Zayn thinks, how he’s still learning about the internal struggles the other boys are having with themselves, even after more than a year. Liam has this furrow in his brow that he only gets when he’s really, well and truly frustrated about something, and Zayn wonders how many headaches he’s liable to give himself, if he hasn’t already, over this.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he says after a moment, “But some of the stupidest shit you all did when you visited me was the stuff that helped me the most. It helped me feel…normal, I guess.”

The furrow in Liam’s brow gets momentarily deeper, then relaxes a little.

“D’you ever wonder,” he starts, then stops for a second. “Do you think it’s wrong, that we’re trying to get back to where we were?”

Zayn looks down for a moment. That’s one of the questions he has asked himself, repeatedly. Is it an insult to people’s memory, a slap in the face to everything they endured? Is he a bad person for still wanting to sing sugar sweet songs and see smiles on people’s faces as a result?

“I think…if this—“ he gestures to the letters on the table in front of them, “—is any indication, we owe it to them to do more than just try.”


	8. Chapter 8

They call their next album “Renewed” and it hits #3 on the Billboard 100 in the first week. They’re all over Britain, singing and signing and singing some more, and the intensity of their fan base hasn’t abated any, but it’s like there’s more respect now, more acknowledgment that they aren’t just teenagers with good looks and good voices, that they’ve been through things that average teenagers haven’t.

They do a signing in Leeds, and a girl, maybe 17, shyly approaches the table when it’s her turn. She’s wearing a headscarf over jeans and a form fitting t-shirt, and her eyes, bright, almost mischievous, remind Zayn of Waliyha. She’s holding a magazine, opened to a picture of himself from a few years ago, before he went into hiding.

“ _Salaam_ ,” she says.

“ _Waalayki salaam_.” The customary greeting comes to him as naturally as English, even though he speaks almost no Arabic or Urdu outside of it. The girl holds out her magazine.

“Will you sign, please?” she asks, with barely a trace of an accent.

“Of course.”

She’s certainly old enough to have been in the camps and to remember it, and part of Zayn wants to ask, but he knows it’s not the time or the place.

“What’s your name?” he asks instead.

“Samira.”

He signs his standard “to Samira, with love,” but instead of signing his name in English, he signs it in Arabic. It takes him a little bit longer, and it’s not as fluid as in English, but Samira beams when he hands the magazine back.

“Thank you,” she says.

And then she’s gone.

-

About a week later, one of their PR people takes him aside, hands him a piece of paper. It’s an email that came through their inbox. He doesn’t recognize the sender’s name, but his confusion abates almost instantly when he starts reading the email.

_My name is Cynthia Brown. My foster daughter, Samira, who I am hoping to adopt, recently attended a One Direction signing in Leeds._

_Samira was held in one of the internment camps for Muslims and was separated from her parents only a few weeks before the camps were shut down. It’s been a difficult and painful road for her to deal with the whole experience, as well as the grief and not knowing exactly what happened to her parents._

_She read about Zayn’s story a few months ago in a magazine, and it has really inspired her and helped her feel that she’s not alone._

_I just wanted to let you know that the opportunity to meet someone she considers a hero, to be greeted in Arabic and to have his signature in Arabic, it meant the world to her and gave her happiness that she hasn’t had in a long time._

_Many thanks._

-

“… _The massive donations have caused a major stir throughout the country and around the world. All five were made separately and anonymously. Two were made to social service groups that are working on housing, employment, and counseling services for people who were interned in the camps. Two were made to child welfare organizations that are helping to re-home orphaned children and reunite families from the camps. The last was made to a legal aid group that is seeking reparations from the government and a formal apology._

_The recipients have so far remained silent on the donors’ identities, stating that it’s the donors’ wishes to remain anonymous. When pressed for clues, one of the advocates working on the reparations case was quoted as saying, ‘They’re just people who want to make a difference. They want to help make sure that as we move on, we’re moving in the right direction.’_

_Reporting live in London, Jennifer Watts, BBC News_.”

*~*FIN*~*


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